The Veazie (Maine) Sewer
District operates a three-cell aerated Lagoon system to treat up to
350,000 gallons of sanitary sewerage per day.

CharterThe Veazie Sewer District Charter
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HistoryFacility Upgrade
The Veazie Sewer District (Maine) uses a three-lagoon system to provide service for it's population of approximately 2000 residents along the Penobscot River. A recent upgrade included cleaning out the plant’s 2-ft sludge blanket for the first time after 12 years of operation, and relining some of the lagoons with high-density polypropylene.
Larger Capacity, Same Size
Veazie constructed upgrades to convert from a partial mix system to a complete mix/partial mix system and increase capacity from 0.2 to 0.35 mgd (757 to 1136 m3/d) without expanding the lagoons.
Upgrades to Lagoons 1 and 2 included lining with high-density polypropylene — they were originally clay lined — and installing a diffused aeration system. Additionally, Lagoon 1 now has two baffles that split it into three sections. The first section will be complete mix and the other two, along with all of Lagoon 2 will be partial mix. The flow openings in the baffle are 3-ft2 (0.3-m2) and sit just below the water’s surface. This placement requires the wastewater to take a serpentine route through Lagoon 1 and eliminates short-circuiting. Lagoon 3 has been covered to control algae and will keep its two mechanical aspirating aerators.
Other improvements include a mechanical screening removal and influent sampling and flow monitoring upgrade, construction of a blower building to house four aeration blowers.
Facility Start-Up
It was in the mid-1980s when the Veazie (Maine) Sewer District began to realize that they would have to look for other alternatives to sewage disposal. The environmental concerns of raw sewage out falling to the Penobscot River from the existing collection system were justified. It was no longer acceptable to allow the material to flow to the waterway. The District acquired the services of a local engineering firm, Woodard and Curran, to come up with a treatment and disposal method for the sanitary sewerage.
The goals for the project were simple: to comply with State and Federal requirements, eliminate raw sewage outfalls, and to provide an affordable collection and treatment system to serve the needs of the Districts customers was decided that a lagoon type system would be the most feasible and practicable method for this issue. The 3-cell aerated lagoon system began serving the people of the community in August of 1989.
Veazie, Maine – A Nitrogen Surprise
After initial startup, however, the treatment process was not able to meet its biological oxygen demand and total suspended solids limits of 30 mg/mL each. In fact, testing revealed that Lagoons 2 and 3 actually produced additional biological oxygen demand.
Veazie personnel along with the Maine Department of Environmental Protection and Design Engineers examined the treatment process — originally designed as an aerated facultative type (partial mix) with aspirating aerators — and discovered that the Lagoon system was stuck in partial nitrification. Once the problem was diagnosed additional aerators were added to avoid partial nitrification.